What Is Kogei? This Japanese Concept of Craft Will Help You Rediscover the Poetry in Everyday Objects
Thoughts from a 310-year-old contemporary interior craft company on how to curate a home with history
Kogei (工芸) is the Japanese word for objects made for everyday use — a cloth, a bowl, a kettle — that are rooted in a particular place, draw on materials and techniques handed down over generations, and still depend on a person making judgements.
This concept of Japanese design is not a synonym for craft, and the difference changes what you look for. I asked Nakagawa, which has made and sold Japanese craft since it was founded in Nara in 1716 and now works with more than 800 workshops across Japan, how they define it.
Two characteristics separate kogei from craft as it's usually understood in the West. Firstly, it has little to do with whether an object was made by hand. And secondly, it's seldom one person’s work. To see art in these monotonously regarded items, here's a closer look at what makes them special.
Yoko Kloeden Design is a London-based architecture and interior design studio, founded by Yoko Kloeden in 2016. Located in West London, the studio specializes in crafting mood-enhancing sanctuaries, seamlessly blending Japanese aesthetics with natural, serene elements. Each project aims to create spaces that feel both harmonious and deeply restorative, reflecting Yoko’s commitment to calm, balanced interiors. The studio provides a full range of architecture and interior design services for private and commercial clients, carefully crafting every space to bring balance, beauty, and well-being to those who inhabit it.
What Is Kogei?
'Aji-kezuri' is the most important stage in making a chasen, in which the softened bamboo tines are carefully shaved to create their curve and spring.
I grew up between Nara and Kyoto, Japan’s first permanent capital and the city that succeeded it for a thousand years. Objects like these were simply what we used.
Tasuku Ogino, executive vice president at Nakagawa, defines it precisely. "Kogei means tools for everyday life, shaped by the practical wisdom that generations before us developed in response to their local climate and way of living, together with the materials found in each region and the skills of its makers," he says.
Japanese has separate words for art, craft, and everyday craft. And kogei is firmly the second. It is not applied art, made to be appreciated, and it is not industrial production, where uniformity and efficiency rule.
"What defines it is that these objects are used daily and keep evolving, adapting to changing lifestyles while holding the knowledge built into them," says Tasuku. An object does not become kogei by being rare, expensive, or signed. It becomes kogei by being useful enough that people kept making it. The same logic behind most small design lessons from Japanese homes.
Tasuku Ogino is the executive vice president of Nakagawa, a company founded in 1716 in Nara, Japan, that blends kogei craftsmanship with contemporary design to create beautiful, practical home goods.
It Has Almost Nothing to Do with the Hand
A beautiful display of craft is one of the most thoughtful things you'll find in a Japanese home.
Whether something is kogei depends not on whether it was made by hand or by machine.
"What matters is whether the object is rooted in its local environment and in accumulated wisdom about daily life," says Tasuku. "Whether it draws on materials and techniques passed down over generations, and whether human judgement stays integral."
The Hana Fukin Cloth from Nakagawa best illustrates this. What began as kaya, the mosquito-net fabric Nara was once known for, was reimagined as a kitchen cloth because the weave is breathable and quick to dry.
Like a split noren in a Japanese doorway, it earns its place by working. It is woven on machines. But the people running them adjust constantly for humidity and for the habits of each loom, and it is that judgement, not the absence of machinery, that keeps it kogei.
It's Rarely One Person's Work
Japanese style decor is rarely passed through a single set of hands, and therein lies its charm.
The misunderstanding Nakagawa meets most often is that Japanese craft means one master artisan making one piece. That tradition is real, as Japan has a formal register of Living National Treasures. However, the craft that runs through ordinary Japanese life is collective.
One piece of ceramics may pass through specialists for the clay, the glaze, the molds, and the firing, all in the same production region, in a division of labor centuries old. Lose one specialist in that chain and the others cannot continue.
The risk is not abstract. Japan’s traditional craft industries employed 288,000 people in 1979. By 2022, the figure was 48,334. "What Nakagawa hopes to pass on is not individual products or techniques," says Tasuku. "But rather the regional ecosystems that make kogei possible at all."
What's the Importance of Kogei?
Rediscovering the beauty in your everyday objects will help you romanticize your home.
If you ask me, the difference is not refinement. It is ordinariness. These are objects made to be used by people who never call themselves collectors, and the government’s criteria for a traditional craft begin there — primarily for use in everyday life.
There are 244 crafts on that list, at least one in each of Japan’s 47 prefectures, and behind each is a region and a chain of people. It is the same instinct as the luxury of enough.
In our own projects, we specify Japanese kogei where we cannot find an equivalent closer to home. It is never put on display. It is used daily, exactly as it would be in a house in Japan.
With homes yearning for a tactile representation of life through design, the DIY revival is real. And for more interior inspiration, sign up for the Livingetc newsletter.